By Anna Nelson @Anna_Nelson95 This blog examines the implications of the current COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen unprecedented restrictions placed upon citizens across the globe, for international surrogacy. It concludes that while the pandemic does indeed pose some novel issues – such as the potential for babies born to surrogates who live abroad during this […]
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COVID-19 and Abortion Care Update: Department of Health and Social Care “Error”
Elizabeth Chloe Romanis, Jordan Parsons, and Nathan Hodson In an unprecedented move, yesterday the Department of Health and Social Care liberalised restrictions on abortion care in England only to revoke that decision hours later. This returned the legal position for abortion provision back to that stated in the approval order of the Secretary of State […]
COVID-19 and Remote Access to Abortion Care: An Update
Elizabeth Chloe Romanis, Jordan Parsons and Nathan Hodson Today, the Department of Health and Social Care announced that a temporary change in the law allowing women in England to access abortion entirely remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The approval order allows women to be prescribed abortion medications remotely and take both early medical abortion medications […]
COVID-19 and abortion care: why we need remote access to reproductive health services
by Elizabeth Chloe Romanis and Jordan Parsons At the end of 2018 the Department of Health announced that in England, following measures implemented earlier in Scotland and Wales, it would become legal for pregnant women to take misoprostol, the second of the two abortion pills at home. Before this, women were required to attend an […]
We failed to meet HIV treatment and family planning goals for 2020: now what?
By Erin Rogers, MPH; Kristin Wall, PhD; Rob Stephenson, PhD Although several international stakeholders, including the United Nations and Family Planning 2020, led the fight to end the HIV and unintended pregnancy epidemics across low and middle-income countries by 2020, we fell short of recognizing these goals. Our recent editorial in BMJ Sexual and Reproductive […]
Sexual health of men who have sex with men in Lebanon
By Ismael Maatouk, Moubadda Assi and Rusi Jaspal The prevalence of HIV in Lebanese men who have sex with men (MSM) is estimated to be 12% and the prevalence of having at least one symptom of sexually transmitted infection (STI) is 34.9%. This is in line with the high-risk behavioural profile among this community where […]
How Should we Regulate Child Sex Robots: Restriction or Experimentation?
By John Danaher In 2017, the Crown Prosecution Services (CPS) decided to clamp down on the importation of child sex dolls into the UK. In doing so, they faced a problem. There was no established legal rule that explicitly banned the purchase and sale of these items. Consequently, the CPS had to get creative. They […]
The challenge of HIV decriminalisation
By Matthew Weait Ever since the discovery of HIV and its modes of transmission there has been a debate about the circumstances in which it is legitimate to criminalise those who pass on the virus to others, or who expose others to the risk of its acquisition. For some, these behaviours are no different from […]
I Donated My Eggs During Medical School – And I’d Do It Again
By Anna Harvey It’s summer, so I only have one layer of clothing to push aside to pinch a chunk of skin on my stomach, and choose a spot to inject myself for the first time. But I’m not a newly diagnosed diabetic; nor am I injecting hormones to prime my body to carry a […]
After death let men donate sperm to infertile people
By Nathan Hodson and Joshua Parker Of all the revolutionary advances provided by artificial reproductive techniques, few would have imagined that it would allow men to have their sperm removed after death and used to successfully produce offspring. Yet recent cases show that it is possible and apparently safe. In these cases it is the […]